The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — For the first time in years, the Dallas City Council is planning to hire fewer police and dip into the pocketbooks of officers and firefighters to help balance the budget.
City staff briefed the council Wednesday on proposals that would cut the public safety budget by at least $22.4 million to address the city’s budget gap, which was initially projected at $130 million.
The city will hire only 88 officers next year. Not replacing every officer who leaves is expected to save $1.5 million.
Police and firefighters would take five furlough days, saving the city $7.5 million. That would be nearly a 2 percent pay reduction for sworn personnel.
And for 18 months, they would receive compensatory time instead of overtime, except in certain limited circumstances, shaving another $8.66 million off the city’s budget in the next fiscal year.
The cuts are part of a proposed three-year contract with police and fire associations, hammered out during months of often-contentious negotiations between the associations and city management.
“There were challenges,” said Dallas Police Chief David Brown. “I think in the end, everybody in the police and fire departments knew we would have to make some kind of sacrifice. {ellipsis} The onus was on us to contribute.”
The cuts represent a major turn of events for public safety. In recent years, the city added 700 officers to the 3,650-officer department as the city sought to reach a goal of having three officers per thousand residents.
Under the proposed contract, the city would fill only about half of the 175 expected openings created when officers leave the force next year.
Still, the size of the police force is not expected to shrink until 2012 at the earliest because so many recruits are already in the pipeline.
“Do we like everything in it? No,” said D.D. Pierce, president of the Dallas Fire Fighters Association. But he added, this is “our contribution to the problems of the budget.”
Copyright 2010 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS